A Spot of Color

Red Spot Paint and Varnish Company delivers quality to global customers.

Colorful, high-performance products imagined and engineered at Red Spot Paint and Varnish Companyโ€™s Evansville headquarters are embedded in all types of vehicles, from rugged Ford trucks to sleek Corvettes.

The success story started in 1903, when Red Spot opened as a small, family-owned business that produced coatings for barns, buggies, carriages, and early automobiles.

By the 1930s, plastics became a growth industry and Evansville emerged as a capital. The timing was fortuitous, as Red Spot evolved into a leading producer of coatings for plastics used in the automotive, appliance, and cosmetics industries, among others. During World War II, Red Spot created olive paint for the U.S. Army.

Red Spot maintains a diverse clientele today, although about 90 percent of its modern business is with vehicle manufacturers. Toyota has the largest share of Red Spotโ€™s automotive business, about 30 percent. Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Stellantis (Fiat and Chrysler) also get slices of the pie.

A few examples of Red Spotโ€™s wide reach: It supplies a company that produces front grilles on nearly all Toyota vehicles assembled in North and South Americas. Its product also is on various car and SUV spoilers.

A clear coating from Red Spot cured with UV light is used on all automotive headlights protecting the lens from premature yellowing. Red Spot formulated this coating and supplies it all over the world.

The entire body of each Chevrolet Corvette manufactured in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is coated with Red Spot primer before the primary color is added.

Company officials note the vast experience of their Evansville-based staff. Turnover is low, and among 262 workers at Red Spotโ€™s U.S. and Canadian locations, the average tenure is 14 years.

โ€œI canโ€™t tell you one person on our team who isnโ€™t a really good fit,โ€ says Trenton Christian, director of sales and technical service.

This in-house expertise enables Red Spot to punch above its weight class.

โ€œRed Spot is unique,โ€ says Mike Brockey, whoโ€™s held multiple roles, including regional sales manager, in his 28 years with the company. โ€œWe are a smaller coatings company competing against the worldโ€™s largest in a global economy. Red Spot has managed this through continuous improvement and production of quality products, while remaining dedicated to employee growth.โ€

Thatโ€™s the type of culture that Red Spot President and CEO Jeff Scheu strives for.

โ€œThereโ€™s a lot of opportunity to have an influence, be heard and be seen, and understand the value of what you provide back to the company,โ€ Scheu says.

Walk through Red Spotโ€™s 26-acre headquarters on East Louisiana Street just north of the Lloyd Expressway, and youโ€™ll find research and development labs, maintenance staff, administrative offices, and the manufacturing of raw materials that later are finished in Evansville and at the companyโ€™s Monterrey, Mexico, facility.

Tanks on the floor are as small as 20 gallons and as large as 3,000 gallons. In 2022, Red Spot manufactured nearly 2.5 million gallons of paint in Evansville.

Test labs evaluate how products fare in different situations, including surfaces, impacts, weather conditions, and more. In 2023, Red Spot claimed 233 active customers and 1,302 distinct formulas.

All products from Red Spot are made to order for each customer, says Mike Webley, tech service manager and a 51-year veteran of the company. Webley also notes Red Spotโ€™s commitment to โ€œdo whatever it takes to get the product to the customer in any market.โ€

Red Spot has maintained its Evansville presence and strength throughout its history, even as global partners joined its ownership and management structure. The company originated Downtown; it moved to its current site in the late 1960s.

A key date in the companyโ€™s lineage was 2000. Thatโ€™s when Red Spot officially aligned with longtime partner Fujikura Kasei Co. of Tokyo, Japan, as well as a British company that became known as Fujichem Sonneborn.

The three companies comprise the Fujikura Kasei Global Network. Red Spotโ€™s executive team remains in Evansville, led since 2021 by Scheu. Since 2008, all company shares have been owned by Fujikura Kasei, which bought the company from Charlie Storms. It was Stormsโ€™ family that founded Red Spot in Evansville in 1903.

In addition to the manufacturing plant in Evansville and its facility in Mexico, Fujikura Kasei also operates in Michigan, Brazil, four European sites, and a dozen more scattered across Asian countries.

This worldwide reach keeps Red Spotโ€™s executive team on the road. Christian spends two weeks per quarter at Red Spotโ€™s facility in Monterrey, and team members from there come to Evansville. Christian also makes annual trips to South America and Japan.

Scheu, who also travels often, started with Red Spot in 1994 as a chemist, and his rise through the company took him through each of its departments. Red Spot today embraces the tagline โ€œMore Than Paint,โ€ which to Scheu means going the extra mile to make sure service and product quality are superior.

Red Spotโ€™s ongoing commitment to Evansville, even as the companyโ€™s global footprint has grown, makes perfect sense, Scheu explains. He cites the significant property investment Red Spot has in the community, as well as the expertise of long-time team members. The companyโ€™s culture enables it to retain people and maintain the highest standard of work, says Scheu, who, like Christian, grew up in Newburgh, Indiana.

โ€œThose that have grown up here like it here and theyโ€™re comfortable, and you get a good quality person too here,โ€ Scheu says. โ€œI think our values, our tenure in the industry, and our ability to continue to find solutions and partner with our customers attracts and keeps people.

โ€œIf you look around the tenure at this place, youโ€™ve got a lot of people that are 30 years-plus, and they just love it,โ€ Scheu adds. โ€œI think theyโ€™re heard, I think they feel valued. … Weโ€™ve all had opportunities to go to other places, and the thing that keeps you going is the fact that weโ€™ve got a purpose here.โ€

ABOUT THAT LOGO

If Red Spot’s circular red logo looks familiar in other contexts, it should.

Itโ€™s nearly identical to that of big-box retailer Target, and Red Spot officials are quick to tell you they had the logo first. Red Spot dates to 1903, long before the first Target store opened in the early 1960s and later mushroomed into a widespread national chain.

A legal settlement enables Red Spot to keep the logo, provided the words โ€œRedโ€ and โ€œSpotโ€ accompany it. And Target, for its part, cannot legally sell its own brand of paint featuring the iconic symbol.

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